God, help me.
The man tries to push himself up. He is kind of fat and his arms quiver as he boosts himself up. It is now that I see the blade handle sticking out from his solar plexor and the steady stream of goopy blood. His arms give out just as he says (or shrieks), “Marian!”
I try to catch him, but he drops like a sack of bricks. As he hits the ground, he screams. The blade handle buries itself farther into him. More blood.
“Mari — ”
And he dies right there on the spot.
I blink away tears. I don’t know why. Dying is sad, I guess, yeah, but this is my fault. This is all my fault. That’s why. I look around at the death and destruction and the missing members of my family and I can’t help but think that this is all my fault.
Froggy. I should’ve killed that son of a bitch the moment I saw him.
“Jack,” Klein says. His voice is loud; it has to be because a building is roaring with flames and caving in on itself and beyond that a child is screaming out for his mother and a man dies shrieking Marian! But when Klein talks I barely hear him. My ears are somewhere else, reaching out across all the destruction, searching for a voice I recognize or scream or a whimper.
But deep down I know none of them would scream or whimper, not even Herb. They’re all strong. They’re all alive.
I flip the man at my feet over. His eyes are open, but he’s not seeing anything. This unnerves me. I don’t stop or pull away. I can’t. All I have is a gun with one bullet and a doctor who has the secrets of the universe in his messenger bag. I grab the knife handle. It is slick with the man’s blood. I pull it free, feeling like King Arthur excavating Excalibur. It’s only after the blade comes out do I realize I am screaming. The man’s blood spurts from his wound, misting my face, making me look like a crazy bastard.
I feel like a crazy bastard.
And when I take up screaming and holding the bloody blade above my head as I run toward the med center, I prove that I am.
About the Author
Flint lives in the United States of America in a very cold and sometimes snowy state where the sports teams are consistently disappointing and the skies are never sunny. He loves zombies, anything post-apocalyptic, Stephen King, Star Wars, and sometimes a good love story. Not necessarily in that order.
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Dead Nation: A Zombie Novel (Jack Zombie Book 3) Page 22